Members marceline Posted July 18, 2014 Members Share Posted July 18, 2014 U.S. QAF did the same thing. I know that music rights were a huge part of the issue for two of my absolute favorite shows of all time: WKRP in Cincinnati and Quantum Leap. Of course both of those shows had stories where the music was part of the plot but even more obscure songs and background music needed to be switched out. They also had to redo audio for scenes where certain songs played in the background. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted July 18, 2014 Members Share Posted July 18, 2014 Agnes on her long DOA website, talked about working out a plan to have favorite AMC episodes on DVD. 5 or so years ago now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members applcin Posted July 18, 2014 Members Share Posted July 18, 2014 Music rights were ostensibly the reason Soapnet never ran Ryan's Hope past 1981. One day you're in the middle of the Merit Kara story and the next day you're back to day one and Mary Ryan bringing Frank's poster into the bar while he's busy getting pushed down the stairs by Delia. At least, several folks have been wonderful enough to upload consecutive episodes to youtube. As much as I would love to see it, I can't see Antenna TV (which does have access to the Sony library) or Me-TV adding soaps, especially during their prime viewing hours. Even though these are stations that show classics, they still care about eyeballs and advertising. That's why shows like Perry Mason and the westerns hold tight on Me-TV, because they attract viewers. I just don't think soaps, especially old ones (and I'm talking your typical soap, not Dark Shadows and stuff like that), are going to bring as many viewers as, say, The Dick Van Dyke Show. People sometimes ask why they don't show retro commercials, not understanding that the stations want to sell that time to current, paying advertisers, even if they're selling catheters. As someone said, I wish P & G would get back in the streaming game like it started with AOL some years back. I wish NBC would use one of its own diginets, like COZI-TV, for its old soaps, or just stream them online. Heck, I wish somebody somewhere would upload consecutive episodes of EON or AW or classic OLTL on youtube or a private Roku channel. There's so much out there that's just being relegated to a closet somewhere. By the way, there is supposed to be a "suite" of 4 more classic tv stations being added to cable later this year, called The Quad. Each station will have shows from a single decade, so it'll be 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. It is nice to see the classic tv horizon expanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted July 18, 2014 Members Share Posted July 18, 2014 I agree with all of that. Interesting about Ryan's Hope--isn't 1981 around the time ABC bought it? It's true the ABC soaps, at any rate, in the 80s started using genuine pop music in a lot of scenes (not just in montages but on the jukebox in coffee shops, etc.) AMC (and maybe the others?) also had a weird habit in the mid 80s of using movie music for much of the background scenes. At the 1980s lecture for the TV Museum Agnes did, one woman mentions that her friend played the (beautiful) theme music from Somewhere in Time and then she heard it on the show. Or in the famous scene where Erica helps Jeremy escape jail they actually use the theme from Halloween (which Soapnet HAS aired intact in marathons--so maybe they cleared the music or nobody noticed.) I just assumed SoapNet didn't air RH past '81 because that was around the writer turnaround and the show started losing its lustre, though I'm not sure SoapNet thinks about such things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members marceline Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 Off topic but has anyone heard from Agnes since the PP soaps collapsed? For some reason, Elaine Stritch's death this week made me think of Agnes and a few other women in the business. I wish/hope/pray that someone/somewhere has documented everything these women have to offer before they're lost to us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Soapsuds Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 I still wonder why they stopped releasing the dvds. I was hoping to get more of ATWT and GL. I think I did get all that were released except for maybe one GL...I am not sure. There was never an explanation as to why they stopped releasing them. I still wonder why they stopped releasing the dvds. I was hoping to get more of ATWT and GL. I think I did get all that were released except for maybe one GL...I am not sure. There was never an explanation as to why they stopped releasing them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ChitHappens Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 applcin, really enjoyed reading that. I learn so much from threads such as this. I guess I'm always confused on the music stuff. The rights to the music have to be purchased as many times as you air an epppy? And anything that keeps that Merit Kara story from airing is alright with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 Well Stritch's life has been well documented. As for Agnes, all I know is that a friend of hers said she's frail but still sharp as a tack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ~bl~ Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 A program can buy the use of the music for one showing or multiple showings, or for DVD and/or streaming now. Back then they didn't think soaps would be showed again so they only paid for the one time usage. To release it now all these years later on DVD or in reruns, they would have to pay for multiple usage. (With some DVD sets, they run into this issue with music because they paid for the music to be used on television, but the rate for the DVD was not in the licensing, hence the replacing of the music as the new music is cheaper.) With Ryan's Hope specifically, they owned the music they played in the episodes that aired on SoapNet, so there were no residual issues. The other issue is that older shows were taped with the audio on the same track as the video, so putting on replacement music is a lot more difficult. The programs either have to get the actors to come in and redo the audio (like they do with audio issues in movies and some television shows fixing in post production) or try to blank the audio the best they can and hope the viewers can't hear the original music along with the talking (that's what they did on the GL disks tho sometimes this wasn't possible.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 I believe it's that they didn't clear the rights for home video release in most cases. With soaps it may be about repeats in general-maybe they only buy the rights for one showing or something, since back then they never thought they'd be repeated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members applcin Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 I just remember talk about it on the SoapNet boards when the show was airing. Someone claimed to have asked Claire Labine if she knew why SN wasn't airing the later shows and she apparently thought it was an ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) issue. SN/ABC was pretty tightlipped about the reason for a long time but they, too, eventually chalked it up to the music issue. But I do remember hearing Neil Diamond (my favorite singer, btw, if you can't tell, lol) in one of the (possibly last) shown episodes so I guess that song wasn't an issue or they were willing to pay whatever was the fee. Quite honestly, I did prefer the earlier years of RH but it still would have been nice not to have had SN keep hitting the rewind button. If necessary, I wouldn't have minded if they had to mute the scenes with the unsecured music and captioned it, but maybe they thought even captioning wasn't worth it. They probably weren't too interested in spending any more money on old shows with a limited audience that they relegated to an overnight time slot. I pick up stuff from the guys talking at the Me-TV and Antenna-TV FB pages. Like, the music rights thing is basically the same reason why those stations don't air some of the old variety shows (aside from folks like Carol Burnett who instead sell theirs in DVD collections). With all the musical performances on them, it's too cost prohibitive. And those smaller stations like Antenna TV don't have the kind of budgets cable networks do. The Flip Wilson Show has gotten played on cable fairly often (and is currently on Aspire) but it's been heavily edited. Wasn't it also the case when SN reran the current soaps that they weren't always replaying the same opening/closing themes? Still, it's nice to hear that some station, somewhere is trying with an old soap...even if it is a station I don't get and a soap I never saw! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members All My Shadows Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 I have indeed seen an episode of 80s AMC use the opening part of the Carrie main theme (the music that plays while the girls are in the locker room), guess I forgot about that! ATWT, towards the end, used a lot of older music from the 70s and 80s, which I thought was interesting. I think Antenna and Me are experimental enough to maybe consider a soap or two. I just refuse to subscribe to its widespread belief that airing a soap or soap reruns is just asking for failure. An hour of classic Y&R at midnight couldn't hurt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members robbwolff Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 As I recollect, music was a big issue when they were deciding which GL and ATWT episodes to release on DVD. I believe they didn't release the Roger/Rita funhouse chase episode because the scene used Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand's Enough is Enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 Right, and that scene would lose a lot without Enough is Enough... Shadows--I remember them using some Carrie music too. Kinda strange as they still had a house composer and I don't think ABC owned rights to those scores--still kinda cool that someone there actually paid enough attention to do that. When OLTL aired their marathon or whatever around the cancelation they replaced the Champagne theme with the modern music. Odd, as I think they've aired episodes with the champagne theme too (it was for the Todd/Blair wedding episode--which actually may have been a special one off and not a marathon) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members applcin Posted July 19, 2014 Members Share Posted July 19, 2014 Well, when Antenna-TV started out and people were requesting dramas, they kept saying, no, we only show comedies. In less than 2 years, they started airing shows like Dragnet and Adam-12, so they did expand upon their original intent. I wish we could ask some network or corporate bigwig somewhere who owns these shows what is preventing them from distributing them...lack of interest on their part, thinking there's no audience, not wanting to take the time or money to make it happen (either online or on tv)....just to find out why it's not even being tried. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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